diff --git a/TESTING b/TESTING
index 4a1e6f4c..a5e08cb8 100644
--- a/TESTING
+++ b/TESTING
@@ -17,7 +17,8 @@ INSTALL.
    Ensure to enable the pdo_sqlite extension in php.ini.
 
 3) Copy conf/config.defaults to conf/config and adjust the configuration
-   (pay attention to disable_http_login, enable_maintenance and aur_location).
+   Pay attention to disable_http_login, enable_maintenance, aur_location and
+   htmldir.
 
    Be sure to change backend to sqlite and name to the file location of your
    created test database.
@@ -31,6 +32,6 @@ INSTALL.
     $ ./gendummydata.py out.sql
     $ sqlite3 path/to/aurweb.sqlite3 < out.sql
 
-5) Run the PHP built-in web server:
+5) Run the test server:
 
-   $ AUR_CONFIG='/path/to/aurweb/conf/config' php -S localhost:8080 -t /path/to/aurweb/web/html
+   $ AUR_CONFIG='/path/to/aurweb/conf/config' python -m aurweb.spawn
diff --git a/aurweb/spawn.py b/aurweb/spawn.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..5fa646b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/aurweb/spawn.py
@@ -0,0 +1,107 @@
+"""
+Provide an automatic way of spawing an HTTP test server running aurweb.
+
+It can be called from the command-line or from another Python module.
+
+This module uses a global state, since you can’t open two servers with the same
+configuration anyway.
+"""
+
+
+import atexit
+import argparse
+import subprocess
+import sys
+import time
+import urllib
+
+import aurweb.config
+import aurweb.schema
+
+
+children = []
+verbosity = 0
+
+
+class ProcessExceptions(Exception):
+    """
+    Compound exception used by stop() to list all the errors that happened when
+    terminating child processes.
+    """
+    def __init__(self, message, exceptions):
+        self.message = message
+        self.exceptions = exceptions
+        messages = [message] + [str(e) for e in exceptions]
+        super().__init__("\n- ".join(messages))
+
+
+def spawn_child(args):
+    """Open a subprocess and add it to the global state."""
+    if verbosity >= 1:
+        print(f"Spawning {args}", file=sys.stderr)
+    children.append(subprocess.Popen(args))
+
+
+def start():
+    """
+    Spawn the test server. If it is already running, do nothing.
+
+    The server can be stopped with stop(), or is automatically stopped when the
+    Python process ends using atexit.
+    """
+    if children:
+        return
+    atexit.register(stop)
+    aur_location = aurweb.config.get("options", "aur_location")
+    aur_location_parts = urllib.parse.urlsplit(aur_location)
+    htmldir = aurweb.config.get("options", "htmldir")
+    spawn_child(["php", "-S", aur_location_parts.netloc, "-t", htmldir])
+
+
+def stop():
+    """
+    Stop all the child processes.
+
+    If an exception occurs during the process, the process continues anyway
+    because we don’t want to leave runaway processes around, and all the
+    exceptions are finally raised as a single ProcessExceptions.
+    """
+    global children
+    atexit.unregister(stop)
+    exceptions = []
+    for p in children:
+        try:
+            p.terminate()
+            if verbosity >= 1:
+                print(f"Sent SIGTERM to {p.args}", file=sys.stderr)
+        except Exception as e:
+            exceptions.append(e)
+    for p in children:
+        try:
+            rc = p.wait()
+            if rc != 0 and rc != -15:
+                # rc = -15 indicates the process was terminated with SIGTERM,
+                # which is to be expected since we called terminate on them.
+                raise Exception(f"Process {p.args} exited with {rc}")
+        except Exception as e:
+            exceptions.append(e)
+    children = []
+    if exceptions:
+        raise ProcessExceptions("Errors terminating the child processes:",
+                                exceptions)
+
+
+if __name__ == '__main__':
+    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(
+        prog='python -m aurweb.spawn',
+        description='Start aurweb\'s test server.')
+    parser.add_argument('-v', '--verbose', action='count', default=0,
+                        help='increase verbosity')
+    args = parser.parse_args()
+    verbosity = args.verbose
+    start()
+    try:
+        while True:
+            time.sleep(60)
+    except KeyboardInterrupt:
+        stop()
diff --git a/conf/config.defaults b/conf/config.defaults
index 447dacac..86fe765c 100644
--- a/conf/config.defaults
+++ b/conf/config.defaults
@@ -41,6 +41,9 @@ cache = none
 cache_pkginfo_ttl = 86400
 memcache_servers = 127.0.0.1:11211
 
+; Directory containing aurweb's PHP code, required by aurweb.spawn.
+;htmldir = /path/to/web/html
+
 [ratelimit]
 request_limit = 4000
 window_length = 86400